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Or being strapped into a zero-gravity roller coaster and preparing to whirl upside down, again and again. Thrill-seekers crave that rush; they thrive on it.

Thrill-seekers tend to be creative folks who like to make up their own minds.

All the signals in our body tell us we're headed in a bad direction.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a little pride. It can propel you forward in tough situations and demonstrates a level of self-assuredness that we all strive for in our personal and professional lives. But there’s a narrow line dividing healthy confidence and stubborn ego, and one of the primary indicators you’ve landed on the wrong side is not being able to admit when you’re wrong.

Struggling to admit our own fault, though — whether it was a major breach or a minor mess-up — doesn’t really serve us well. Not only can it sour some of our closest relationships, but it can even be detrimental to our own personal growth.

In other cases, though, it’s possible to be aware that you’re wrong — whether mildly or outright — but still struggle to wave the guilty flag due to our precious egos.

The coronavirus continues to spread worldwide, with over 200,000 confirmed cases and at least 8,000 dead. In the United States, there have been at least 8,000 cases and more than 100 deaths, according to a New York Times database.

Most important: Do not panic. With a clear head and some simple tips, you can help reduce your risk, prepare your family and do your part to protect others.

That might be hard to follow, especially for those who can’t work from home. Also, if you’re young, your personal risk is most likely low. The majority of those who contract coronavirus do not become seriously ill, and it might just feel as if you have the flu. But keeping a stiff upper lip is not only foolhardy, but will endanger those around you.

psychosocial: Having both psychological and social elements.

Psychologists attempt to understand not only the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, but also the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.

Some are employed in industrial and organizational settings, in health-care settings, in the media, in sports, or in forensic investigation and other law-related fields.

Fallacies are illicit shortcuts in reasoning, bad arguments that sound good but don’t actually make logical sense. Politicians and other public figures use them all the time ad nauseam in speeches and debates in order to better capture the hearts and minds of their audience.

But of all the logical fallacies out there, one stands out as being particularly powerful and popular, especially in politics: the straw man.

But that’s the truth, and the truth is irrelevant when it comes to fallacies. Just the fact that Clinton mentioned the term open borders, combined with her more liberal stance on immigration, was enough for Trump to say that she’s in favor of totally open borders

In his mind, he seems to think it's the riots of the 1960s all over again, and his reaction appears both terrified and angry. "LAW & ORDER!" was the response he voiced via Twitter on Sunday and again in a public address on Monday.

a hellscape governed by a man frozen in his childhood and out of step with the times. The world is spiraling out of control and its most powerful man is abjectly unprepared and unqualified.

he convulsive 1960s was America's most trying period of unrest in modern times.

Buddha as a way to extinguish the sufferings are right views, right resolve/aspiration, right speech, right action/conduct, right livelihood, right effort right mindfulness and right concentration.

Orientalist Alan Watts wrote ‘if we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy’.

He endeavored to unravel the mystery of world's miseries. Finally, his mission was fulfilled and Prince Siddhartha became Buddha or “Enlightened”.

Texts arrived with the tones of a French horn and were similarly dispatched. Soon, I was reaching for the device every time it made a sound, like Pavlov’s dog salivating when it heard a bell. This started to interfere with work and conversations. The machine had seemed like a miraculous servant, but gradually I became its slave.

Habits, good and bad, have long fascinated philosophers and policymakers. Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, surveyed existing notions of virtue and offered this summary: “Some thinkers hold that it is by nature that people become good, others that it is by habit, and others that it is by instruction.” He concluded that habits were responsible. Cicero called habit “second nature,” a phrase that we still use.

Our minds, Wood explains, have “multiple separate but interconnected mechanisms that guide behavior.” But we are aware only of our decision-making ability—a phenomenon known as the “introspection illusion”—and that may be why we overestimate its power.

Psychological research comparing women and men on measures of anger find that they are more alike than different. Men and women are equally likely to experience anger and the intensity of their anger is remarkably similar. Regardless of gender, we get angry when frustrated, criticized, betrayed, rejected, or disrespected. When someone behaves immorally or unethically it can also lead to our anger and outrage.

But anger is “gendered.” It’s perceived through gendered (and racial) lenses. While most emotion is identified as feminine, anger is considered more of a masculine emotion. Anger and its expression are contrary to traditional beliefs about women’s essential “nature” as compassionate, passive, and other-centered. Meanwhile, anger and its expression as aggression and violence, is viewed as naturally male, and masculine. “Boys will be boys,” so many people say.

Their apologies likely reflect an awareness that anger and assertiveness are generally more acceptable for men than they are for women, and that they must be careful not to appear “too emotional” as this is sometimes used to justify the exclusion of women from political leadership roles.

Dymond began by assessing empathy with the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)—a set of cards depicting images of archetypal personalities and dramatic scenes created by psychologist Henry Murray and artist Christiana Morgan. Subjects scrutinized the images and told stories about the figures in the pictures. These stories were frequently drawn from the subject’s own experiences.

Empathy was no longer a matter of making up intricate stories but of correctly predicting another’s response. Dymond's revised definition of empathy appeared in her 1952 paper as: “the imaginative and accurate transposing of oneself into the thinking, feeling and acting of another”

The finding that many undergraduates had little empathic accuracy prompted psychologists to propose that empathy should be trained. In 1952, Dartmouth offered a new course, “Introduction in Human Relations,” aimed at increasing students’ sensitivity to the attitudes and feelings of others. The Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport expressed concern that the social sciences had fallen far behind the rapid developments made in the natural sciences. He viewed the failure to understand social relationships as an existential threat: the chances for the survival of humanity were poor, he mused, “unless we can improve mankind’s understanding and control of social and personal factors” [6].

Applied mathematical knowledge was also downplayed. Hardy's circle rejected Isaac Newton's emphasis on empirical testing of mathematical hypothesis and also rejected the European emphasis on using math for human betterment. Math, for Hardy's group, was not supposed to be applicable or useful for the masses. It was there for one purpose only: for the enjoyment of the few truly great minds who could understand and appreciate it. Hardy bragged that none of his mathematical work had been of any use to humanity, saying , "I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world."

From watching and participating in debates over the years regarding Reaganomics, patterns of logical fallacies and factual errors repeatedly arise among critics on the Left.  As the troublesome facts demonstrating the failures of Obamanomics accumulate, we find that almost religiously minded supporters of President Barack Obama can't deal with those facts, and exhibit analogous logical fallacies.

Some critics falsely argue that Reagan increased payroll taxes which are paid much more by lower and moderate income workers.  The payroll tax rate increases of the 1980s were adopted under President Carter and the Democratic Congress in 1977.  The Greenspan Commission Social Security rescue plan adopted in 1983 only advanced a couple of these already scheduled payroll tax rate increases by a year or two.  But the ultimate plan for payroll taxes is to phase them out entirely in favor of lower cost personal accounts to finance the benefits currently financed by those taxes, as discussed in previous columns in this space.

we’re not the only species to consider “nothing” a number. Parrots and monkeys understand the concept of zero, and now bees have joined the club, too.

researchers trained 10 bees to identify the smaller of two numbers. Across a series of trials, they showed the insects two different pictures displaying a few black shapes on a white background. If the bees flew to the picture with the smaller number of shapes, they were given delicious sugar water, but if they flew toward the larger number, they were punished with bitter-tasting quinine.

a white background containing no shapes at all. Even though the bees had never seen an empty picture before, 64% of the time they chose this option rather than a picture containing two or three shapes,

Fifty years after humans first left bootprints in the lunar dust, it’s an enticing idea. The effort and the commitment of brainpower and money, and the glorious achievement itself, shine as an international example of what people can do when they set their minds to it. The spinoff technologies ended up affecting all of our lives.So why not do it all over again — but instead of going to another astronomical body and planting a flag, why not save our own planet?

But President Kennedy did not have to convince people that the moon existed. In our current political climate, the clear evidence that humans have generated greenhouse gases that are having a powerful effect on climate, and will have a greater effect into the future, has not moved the federal government to act with vigor. And a determined faction even argues that climate change is a hoax, as President Donald Trump has falsely stated at various times.

The task of reversing that accumulation of greenhouse gases is vast, and progress is painfully slow.

Psychologists have found that people have a tendency to rely too heavily on the very first piece of information they learn, which can have a serious impact on the decision they end up making.

In one example, participants spun a wheel to select a number between 0 and 100. The volunteers were then asked to adjust that number up or down to indicate how many African countries were in the U.N. Those who spun a high number gave higher estimates while those who spun a low number gave lower estimates. In each case, the participants were using that initial number as their anchor point to base their decision.

You read online that the average price of the vehicle you are interested in is $27,000 dollars. When you are shopping at the local car lot, the dealer offers you the same vehicle for $26,500, which you quickly accept—after all, it's $500 less than what you were expecting to pay. Except, the car dealer across town is offering the exact same vehicle for just $24,000, a full $2,500 less than what you paid and $3,000 less than the average price you found online.

First impressions are powerful. We all remember being instantly drawn to or put off by someone we’ve just met.

imagine you see a video of a skateboarder landing an especially impressive trick. If she’s the first of a group of competitors, you’ll probably assume the rest of the group is equally skilled. But if you know this skater standout was the third to compete, it’s less likely to influence your impression of the rest of the group.

“Labeling someone or something ‘first’ can have a huge influence not only on your judgment of them, but on your judgment of others that are associated with them,”

That’s because, researchers say, our brains do their best to keep us from dwelling on our inevitable demise.

Various words appeared above the faces on screen. Half of the time these were death-related words such as “funeral” or “burial”. The scientists found that if a person’s own face flashed up next to deathly words, their brain shut down its prediction system. It refused to link the self with death and no surprise signals were recorded.

Being shielded from thoughts of our future death could be crucial for us to live in the present. The protection may switch on in early life as our minds develop and we realise death comes to us all.

From Newton to quantum physics to Hannah Arendt, a mind-bending, heart-opening invitation to welcome nature exactly as it is and ourselves exactly as we are.

video games are one of the most seductive of all of these activities because they fulfill our psychological needs more efficiently than almost any other activity.

A game’s narrative makes our choices feel significant enough that we buy into the game emotionally, and the feedback system encourages us to keep working.

These highly tuned feedback systems are the key to turning video games into an indispensable tool for bettering our future.

the struggle to be optimistic is a difficult one, and it is not mastered all at once. 

ach new situation is a new opportunity to begin again, to develop that more positive frame of mind that enables the belief that life is worth living.

I do care about the people who, right now, are lying on the couch because they are disabled by depression.